


Relic

by LindleyJo



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1766743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindleyJo/pseuds/LindleyJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A relic from Runner Five's apocalyptic life suddenly turns up at Abel.</p><p>For Iron Zombies! Challenge - June 2014</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relic

**Author's Note:**

> So… I’m not entirely happy with how this turned out, but whatever. I haven’t sat down to write in so long that I guess it makes sense that I’m a little rusty. Anyway, here’s my contribution to Iron Zombies!
> 
> Prompt: "The worst feeling is the moment that you realize you've lost yourself."

Five’s eyes went wide the moment she saw it. The light blue case was cracked in half a dozen places and she could see obvious signs of fire and water damage, but she knew it was hers. There was no denying it; despite all odds being 100% against it, the runners had somehow managed to bring her laptop back to Abel.

It had been sitting on a pile of junk on Sam’s desk when she first saw it. She stopped in her tracks, not completely comprehending what she saw. It was like a… a relic. It should have been in a museum with a plaque next to it saying something about how people used to amuse themselves before the apocalypse by constantly browsing social networking sites and taking idiotic pictures with their friends. 

“Five? Fiiiiive?” Sam’s voice had suddenly snapped her out of her reverie. He was waving one hand in front of her face and had the other on her shoulder. “You alright, there?” Gently, he took off her headset for her, not even tangling it in her ponytail this time. “I was just saying that-“

“Where did you get that?” she interrupted, quietly indicating to the pile of tech pieces of Sam’s desk. He glanced behind him at the mess with a non-committal shrug.

“Four and Eight went out for a tech run earlier and I guess they were able to reach Phoenix Comics and traded some first aid supplies for it. Who knows where they got it, probably belonged to some college kid who dropped it when they got themselves bitten on the road. Fat lot of good that did them, I’m sure. Doesn’t matter anyway. We need the parts and it looks like it’s still in decent shape… Why? What’s wrong, Five?”

She shook her head and moved to touch it. Her hand hovered over the cracked case, examining a few new scuffs that she hadn’t noticed before. “I just… it’s familiar, is all,” she said quietly, turning to face him.

His stupid grin lit up his face. “I never pegged you as such a… a hipster, Five! You had a Mac Book, didn’t you? Probably spent all your time posting black and white pictures on Tumblr and changing the filter on your Instagram, didn’t you?” He came over to stand next to you and gave you a nudge with his shoulder. “Nah, I bet you told everyone you had it for school, didn’t you? You were studying marketing, right?”

She nodded and finally got up the courage to brush a few thumb drives off the top of the case to lift the lid. She half expected the now unfamiliar notes to sound and the screen to blink to life like it had so many times in the past.

Nothing.

Five wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. Brushing her hair behind her ear, she turned to face Sam. He was watching her with more concern than she had been expecting. “Everything alright, Five?”

She nodded, plastering a smile to her face and moving around him. “I’m fine, Sam. Just a little tired after that run, you know how it is.” She felt ridiculous. It had been almost two years since she’d dropped it to distract a pack of shamblers. Two years of rain and mud and theft - of course it wasn’t working. Hell, it was practically a miracle that it was still in once piece, let alone in the same room as her.

“You know… it would probably work if we plugged it in for a few minutes,” he finally suggested, catching on to what was going through her mind. Gingerly, he picked up the laptop and carried it over to the small generator that was powering the rest of the tech in the Comm’s Shack. He spent a minute fiddling with an old charger that was definitely not from Apple before connecting it on the side.

“Sam… that’s not even…”

He shushed her and moved to put his arm around her shoulders. She was suddenly aware of how sweaty and disgusting she must seem, but then Sam always tended to smell like Marmite and general B.O. so it may not have even been noticeable. He guided her to stand right in front of the screen.

They stared at their own reflections for a few minutes. It was the first time she had actually seen herself in years. Overall, she was mostly the same but her once slightly chubby cheeks were completely gone, and her eyes housed deep, dark circles that had once only been there during finals week.

Sam watched her examine her reflection; his arm still wrapped around her shoulders, before the screen suddenly flickered to life. The now unfamiliar start up tone rang through the room and the Apple logo appeared on the screen. The colors in the right corner were distorted where someone had obviously stepped on it and there was a chip in the middle of the screen, but miraculously everything else seemed to work.

“Someone must have brought it indoors at some point early on,” Sam explained, finally taking his arm off her shoulder and moving closer to the keyboard. He tapped the keys a couple of times until the logon page appeared and a younger version of Runner Five grinned back at him from a circle in the center. “Do you want the honors?”

She nodded faintly and moved next to him. Her fingers moved automatically, typing in the same password she had been using for years. The screen went black for a second before opening to her home screen.

A few windows immediately popped up – Google Chrome, Microsoft Word (with an old file that looked like a report for one of her classes), and iPhoto. It took a moment to load, but before she knew it, the faces of her family and friends were smiling back at her from the screen. Without a glance at Sam, she clicked silently through the pictures.

A photo of two of her sorority sisters and herself making stupid faces for the camera. A group hug between her pledge class on the day before she left for London. Her family standing together at the airport before she boarded the plane. A slew of tourist photos from around London followed by a ton of pictures of her and her newfound friends. The last was of herself and three other college students huddled in a blanket fort. That had been the last she saw of them – of all of them.

She didn’t know where her family was now, or even if they were alive. She hadn’t been in contact with her sorority sisters for years now, and there was no way all of them were still around. And her friends from London were gone– she had made sure they wouldn’t become zoms herself. She would say that she was the only one left, but that wasn’t quite true.

Suddenly, she snapped the lid shut and squeezed her eyes shut. “Sam?” she asked quietly, clenching and unclenching her fist. He came up behind her and gently put his hand on her back. It hurt, but she knew that she couldn’t survive by constantly living in the past. The person she was now didn’t know those people, and they didn’t know her. “Delete them for me, yeah?”

“Yeah.”


End file.
